Can't Fill Lakes Powell and Mead Again, Ever

This is a most-interesting chart, which shows water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, by decade, since 1970. The point of the chart is to illustrate just how far gone the Colorado River system is now. Water demand is so high now (particularly after the Central AZ Project and the Southern NV Water Authority were completed), and inflow so low, that no expert anticipates being able to see both reservoirs full again in their lifetime. Look at that big drop from 2000 to 2005! Filling the reservoirs now would require six extremely-wet years in a row. Not likely to happen:

Demand for Colorado River water picked up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile-long water delivery system, brings water from the Colorado River to Arizona’s most populous counties and wasn’t completed until the 1990s. The Southern Nevada Water Authority was created in 1991.

Arizona began starting to take its full apportionment of river water in the late 1990s, and Nevada in the early 2000s. California continues using the single largest share of the river. 

“Now the water use is maxed out. Every state is taking too much, and we have to cut back. And so there’s just not enough. You would need wet year after wet year, after wet year after wet year, after wet year. Even then, because the demand is so high, it still wouldn’t fill,” Hasencamp said in an interview.